“How come?” she presses.
“Does it matter? Can we just eat now, please?”
“You’re the one giving us so much interesting stuff to talk about,” Nick says, trying to take me down; but I’m going to takehimdown with my bare hands, with his head in the upstairs toilet.
“What happened?” Mum won’t let it go.
Jesus, Nick.I’ll kill you one day.
“Nothing happened, okay?”
“That must be why she seemed so off with me this morning.”
I snap my head towards Riley.
“She wasn’t as chatty or cheerful as usual. She seemed really down, thoughtful.”
“Maybe she has other problems,” Ian comments, trying to calm everyone down, but his other half is already too invested.
“I didn’t do anything,” I say, feeling the need to clear it up. “We had an argument, end of story.”
“I can imagine,” Nick comments, his eyebrow raised.
“She got pissed off at me for nothing, okay? So she ran off to the toilets, and I followed her to clear things up. But it’s impossible to talk to that woman!” I say, laying my life out on the table for everyone to see.
“Well,” my father suddenly speaks up. “That just means you’ll have to go and apologise to her tomorrow.”
“What?” I look at him through narrowed eyes.
He turns to face me and speaks calmly. “I don’t know what you did, but, knowing you, I’m sure it wasn’t nice.”
“Wow, thanks,” I say, throwing my hands up.
“Don’t test us, Ryan. We all know you too well.”
I have a family full of traitors.
“Tomorrow you’ll go over to her, apologise, take her some flowers and ask her out.”
I spray my mouthful of beer right into Nick’s face.
“Hey, what the fuck?!”
Serves him right.
“That’s not going to happen,” I tell my dad, falling back against my chair.
“You’ll damn well do it.”
“I’m not thirteen, you can’t tell me what to do. I’m a grown man, for fuck’s sake!”
“I’ll stop telling you what to do when you start acting like a man. I just hope that happens before I’m six feet under.”
“Did you hear that, little Ryan?” Nick challenges me, raising his wine glass.
“Nick,” Dad turns to him. “You’re grounded.”
Silence falls over the table.
